Friday Filler: Do You Hulu?
Here at LiC, we pride ourselves in always being a couple of days late with what the cool kids are talking about. True to form, check out Hulu. It’s a joint venture between two evil empires (GE’s NBC Universal and News Corp’s FOX) bringing you high quality streams of many of your favorite movies and TV shows. The cost? Just a little piece of your soul as you’re forced to watch advertising in one form or another.
I started watching Some Like it Hot and was given a choice between interspersed advertising or the complete trailer for Baby Mama. I chose a bullet in the brain pan.
So far there are episodes from around 250 TV shows (CBS and ABC are notably absent) and 100 feature length movies with more being added every day. They also offer clips of selected movies for your embedding enjoyment. Sometimes the embedded clips are preceded by ads, sometimes they’re not.
The quality is decent, but more suitable for TV shows than movies.
Source: Awards Daily and AP
Filed under: Miscellaneous
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I have a friend here who is all over this. I checked it out and the idea is cool, but so far the range of available options coupled with the fact that I have to watch it on my computer makes it kind of lame to me.
If I could stream this to my TiVo somehow, that would make it worth it. I suppose I could try to view this via the browser in the PS3, but that browser has all the functionality of the internet circa 1998, so I doubt it would work.
Oh well. Wake me when Hulu is in HD on my TV.
No I do not Hulu, you have to be a damn US resident.
I would love to Hulu, I would Hulu all the time.
I clicked on the “The Big Lebowski” link, and nothing but a lovely little “Thanks, but no thanks” message.
I’ll just pretend to Hulu.
Yeah, this is about a half year old but has really picked up a lot of buzz lately for some reason. Maybe they expanded their selection. I tried to watch The Usual Suspects at one point but bailed when I had to log in or do something that would have taken 8 more seconds. I think the R-rated movies required a few more “hulA” hoops to jump through.
I know Joost has been struggling for about a year, too. I don’t think they planned on all the TV networks making their current shows available online. Regardless, Hulu has the upperhand as it’s in bed directly with the studios and also offers older shows.
I’ll wait with Joel.
Yeah, Daniel, I think NBC’s marketing arm has been quietly hyping this one to various sites and increasing awareness of it as it’s part of their effort to counter iTunes. After bailing on Steve Jobs, they’ve been doing everything in their power to steer viewers towards their content on Hula and Amazon’s Unbox.
Irony is, most of the new NBC content on there is pretty unappealing to me. I watched a bunch of the SNL skits from 2007 and they were painfully unfunny. There’s a TWBB/NCfOM skit that is just awful.
The milkshake shop one? Yeah, that didn’t so much work.
yeah, SNL isn’t so good this year.
I was looking at the Hulu site’s list of movies that are available and it’s bizarre, but I have to admit that I respect them for including such obscure choices as Kagemusha, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Naked Lunch, and Pumpkinhead.
All Fox movies.
I’d rather just pay in the form of shelling out cash for DVDs than have ot subject myself to more commercials penetrating my brain, thank you.
I’m with Jeff on the commercial angle. I’m sick and f’ing tired of ads everywhere I turn. Thank god for Arclight.
Well sure, agreed, but paying for it kinda negates the whole FREE aspect that I think makes it appealing in the first place.
People need to realize that there are costs that can’t be counted in dollars and cents.
It’s like HBO vs. NBC. I’ll take HBO.
(not the best analogy since I don’t take HBO, but then this year has been fairly NBC free as well)
I’ve looked into Hulu a bit. I was really disappointed with the TV show selection and I’d much rather not watch a movie on my computer so I didn’t even bother checking out what they had for movies. It was lame that most of the TV shows weren’t full episodes, or most of them were clips that had to be watched sequentially. Whatever. I didn’t like it too much. I’ll stick to Netflix and my own movies. That is, unless I’m really bored.
An early thank you to Hulu for prompting me to watch the hilarious Natalie Portman rap sketch again.
Craig needs to find a way to ask George Takei the question. Do you Hulu, Sulu?
Or perhaps former New Hampshire Governor and White House Chief of Staff John Sununu.